EXEGETICAL NOTES.—
(ע) Lamentations 4:17 refers to the persons remaining in the city, who, notwithstanding that God’s righteous judgments had so afflicted prophets and priests, yet thought longingly of human defences; Still our eyes failed [looking] for vain help. This is explained in the succeeding clause, We eagerly watched for a nation that could not save, trusting that Egypt, that broken reed, or perhaps some other equally unsatisfactory auxiliary, would appear to rescue them.
(צ) Lamentations 4:18. Whatever their expectations might be, they were under constant pressure from the besieging army. They hunted our steps; every movement was closely watched, so that we could not go in our streets, there, liable to be laid hold on at every turn, all seemed to be over. The final cessation of their independence was but the question of an hour, our end is come, our national life extinguished.
(ק) Lamentations 4:19. Flight from the city was of no benefit. Fugitives were promptly and hotly followed, whether they betook themselves to the cavernous retreats of the everlasting hills, or to waste and lonely places. Swifter were our pursuers than the eagles of heaven; on the mountains they chased us, in the desert they laid wait for us. So the deportation to Babylon is prepared for, and proof given of the complete break-up of the organised community of Israel.
(ר) Lamentations 4:20. The crowning evidence of the collapse was the seizure of the head of the State, who is considered to have been, not King Josiah but Zedekiah, by most commentators. The breath of our nostrils, the token of our life, is the monarch. An idea like this was prevalent among ancient peoples, and a noticeable confirmation of it is quoted from Seneca, De Clementia: “He (the sovereign) is the vital breath which so many thousands (of citizens) draw.” In his life the nation views the representative of its life. “God made David king, and his posterity, for this end that the life of the people might, in a manner, reside in him;” and so long as he was among them, there seemed to be a pledge of the favour of God, and so of their continued existence as a separated nation. Zedekiah might be irresolute and weak, but it is not personal character, it is office which is regarded—the anointed of Jehovah. “We must observe that these high terms properly belong to Christ only, for David was not the life of the people except as he was a type of and represented His person … and hence we learn that the Church is dead when separated from its Head” (Calvin). The representative of this earthly life of the nation had disappeared, was taken, “like a wild animal driven into a pitfall,” in their pits. His capture by the hostile forces is related in Jeremiah 52:7-11, and was achieved about a month prior to the sack of Jerusalem. It was the prelude to the conviction that their last hopes were being crushed. Of whom we said, Under his shadow we will live among the nations. As a captive to Babylon, there was not the ghost of a chance to rally round him, and no sort of prospect of existing as a semi-independent people in any foreign land. The end had come.
HOMILETICS
THE LAST HOURS OF A DOOMED PEOPLE
I. Every hope of rescue is disappointed. “Our eyes failed for our vain help: we have watched for a nation that could not save us” (Lamentations 4:17). Israel had been prone to rely on the help of Egypt, and was often bitterly deceived. In this instance the deluded inhabitants looked eagerly, till their eyes were weary, for the coming of a relief force from Egypt, but in vain. That treacherous kingdom, which had failed them so often before, again failed them in their extremity. Whatever aid they might expect from the neighbouring kingdoms with which Judah had been in friendly alliance, it did not come. When the soul is alienated from God, every reliable source of help is cut off. When God will not help us, man cannot.
II. Every avenue of escape is closely guarded. “They hunt our steps, that we cannot go in our streets. Our persecutors are swifter than the eagles; they pursued us, they laid wait for us” (Lamentations 4:18-19). The enemy was drawing his lines more firmly round the city; the investment was complete, and slowly but surely he was gaining the mastery over the city. Impatient with the little progress made and enraged with the stubborn resistance of the besieged, the Chaldeans missed no opportunity to do damage. Every stray wanderer in the streets was a mark for their arrows, and those who attempted to escape from the festering city were at once seized.
III. There is a deepening conviction that the end is near. “Our end is near; our days are fulfilled, for our end is come” (Lamentations 4:18). The sight of the towers erected by the besiegers advancing in height filled the citizens with terror. Weakened with famine and disease, distracted with divisions among themselves, and alarmed with the steady encroachments of the enemy, they felt that further resistance was useless; they waited in sullen helplessness for the end. The end soon came.
IV. The last vestige of hope is destroyed in the capture of their king. “The anointed of the Lord was taken in their pits” (Lamentations 4:20). Feeble as Zedekiah was, he was still their king, “the anointed of the Lord.” “And now that the state was falling, he was the very breath of life to the fugitives, who would have no rallying-point without him; whereas if he escaped, they might with him have found a refuge among some of the neighbouring nations, and as long as they had a king of David’s line all hope of prolonging their national existence would not seem lost.” But the seizure of Zedekiah in his desperate attempt to escape, and the cruelty of his infuriated captors in putting out both his eyes, quenched the last lingering hope of the doomed people. Their king was a sightless, helpless prisoner, and all was over. The national life was extinguished. We cannot but admire the dogged bravery of the people in their resolute defence of king and country; but it was the bravery of desperation and despair. The fiat of destruction had gone forth, and it was now fulfilled in every detail.
LESSONS.—
1. The nation that rebels against God is defenceless.
2. The threatenings of God against disobedience are not meaningless.
3. Between the threatening of doom and its accomplishment there is ample opportunity for repentance and reform.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Lamentations 4:17. The weary watcher.
1. Eagerly longs for much-needed help.
2. Impairs his eyesight with the intensity of his vigil.
3. Is bitterly disappointed when he looks for help in vain.
Lamentations 4:18-19. The helplessly baffled. I. Are everywhere menaced with danger. “They hunt our steps, that we cannot go in our streets” (Lamentations 4:18). II. Retreat is cut off in every direction. “Our persecutors are swifter than the eagles” (Lamentations 4:19). III. Sullenly submit to the inevitable. “Our days are fulfilled, for our end is come” (Lamentations 4:18).
Lamentations 4:20. Royalty.
1. Is the symbol of government and protection.
2. Is the representative of national life and character.
3. Its degradation involves national disaster.
ILLUSTRATIONS.—Disappointment. When Daniel O’Connell, on account of his ill-health, was ordered to leave England, he started for Rome, having had for many years a desire to see that city. In the city of Genoa he was seized with paralysis, was unable to proceed farther, and died there, never having looked upon the longed-for sight.
A clever escape. When Mazzini fled from France, he had to risk being seized by the French police at Marseilles. He refused to be hidden as a stowaway, and when they came to look for him, they passed without notice a man in his shirt-sleeves coolly washing bottles in the cook’s kitchen.
A sad end. Cardinal Pole, suspected even by Queen Mary, whom he had liked to serve, was on his death-bed when she died. Among the last sounds that fell on his ears must have been the bells of Westminster ringing the knell of the cause to which he had sacrificed his life; and before the evening he too had passed away, a blighted, brokenhearted man, detested by those whom he had laboured most anxiously to serve.
Attachment stronger than death. On the 18th of December 1851, Turner the painter died in the front room of 119 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, fronting the Thames. To an upper window, no longer able to paint, too feeble to walk, he had been wheeled every morning during those last days, that he might lose no light of the December sun on his beloved Thames.
The last parting.
“How shall we know it is the last good-bye?
The skies will not be darkened in that hour,
No sudden blight will fall on leaf and flower,
No single bird will hush its careless cry,
And you will hold my hands, and smile or sigh
Just as before. Perchance the sudden tears
In your dear eyes will answer to my fears;
But there will come no voice of prophecy;
No voice to whisper, ‘Now, and not again,
Space for last words, last kisses, and last prayer,
For all the wild unmitigated pain
Of those who, parting, clasp hands with despair.’
‘Who knows?’ we say; but doubt and fear remain.
Would any choose to part thus unaware?”
A good king a blessing. Speaking of the reign of Leopold I. of Tuscany, as compared with the despotism of the Medicis, Mr. Howells says:—“I confess that it has a great charm for my fancy. It is like a long stretch of sunlight in that lurid, war-clouded landscape of history, full of repose and genial, beneficent growth. For twenty-six years, apparently, the good prince got up at six o’clock in the morning and dried the tears of his people. In his time, ten years passed in which no drop of blood was shed on the scaffold. The hospitals that he founded, the order and propriety in which he kept them, justly entitled him to the name of Father of the Poor. He was happy because he saw his people were happy. He believed in God.”
Uncertainty of royal favours.
“Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye;
I feel my heart new opened. Oh, how wretched
Is that poor man that hangs on prince’s favours!
There is betwixt that smile we should aspire to,
That sweet aspèct of princes, and their ruin,
More pangs and fears than wars or women have;
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,
Never to hope again.”—Shakespeare.